You're reading: US screenwriting guru to lecture Ukrainian filmmakers

“Do not bore people. Boredom is the ultimate sin,” insightfully advises Robert McKee, an American screenwriting guru who is in Kyiv to give a four-day lecture. Starting Oct.11, the session will cover the basics of storytelling and screenwriting. 

McKee’s
isn’t one for complicated advice. Talking to the Kyiv Post on the eve of the
seminar, he underscored three basic principles to follow:
Engage the people’s intellectual and emotional interest, hold it in progression for two hours and satisfy it at the end.

Yet that
simple approach seems to have paid off. McKee’s students have won 49
Oscar winners, 168 Emmy Awards nominees, and worked as screenwriters
on
smash-hits like “The Lord of the Rings,” “The Da Vinci Code,” “Batman,”
“Shrek,” “X-Men,” “Star Wars” and many others. His bestselling book “Story”
and has been translated into over 20 languages.

But don’t expect any ready-made recipes.
“That kind of thinking is exactly what’s wrong (with cinematography),” says the 71-year old
McKee.

The seminar itself will be dedicated mostly to
the form of storytelling, which is fundamental according to McKee.

“The form is ideal when it expresses the
content,” he says, mentioning “Run Lola, Run” a 1998-year
German thriller based on coincidences and randomness as a good example. “If you
don’t understand the form you’re condemned to copy,” he adds.

The program will also cover structural elements
of the story, its planning and adaptation.

The
American has a rather critical view on modern Ukrainian
cinematography, which
he sees as excessively dependent on adapting famous novels. That’s why he plans to focus on the
advanced elements of writing original stories.

“What Ukrainian cinema really need is a burst
of original screenwriting,” says McKee. “I haven’t seen a one yet among recent
Ukrainian films that captured my interest.”

“But it’s true about almost all European
cinematography, and continental film in general is the cannibalism of novels,”
he adds.“I want to free people not to copy but be original.”

Over 50,000
people have attended McKee’s seminars over the last 15 years. The upcoming
session will be the first one in Ukraine, however, and McKee hopes it will
attract a lot of film makers, playwrights, novelists and journalists. 

Robert
McKee Seminar

Oct.11-14

9 a.m.
– 7 p.m.

Admission
fee – Hr 7,000-9,600 ($875-1200)

Ukraine
cinema

5
Gorodetskogo St.

(066) 970-0249

(099) 747-0832

http://www.cinemotionlab.com